Posted
by
ScuttleMonkeyon Friday October 09, 2009 @05:43PM
from the yes-but-is-it-wet? dept.

Several sources are sending us reports of NASA's recent LCROSS Moon impact mission. While the visual results seem to be less than stunning, LCROSS Principal Investigator Anthony Colaprete said the initial results produced "the data we need," but refused to say anything about "water or no water." "The goal of this dual impact was to have the Centaur upper stage impact first, allowing the LCROSS spacecraft to observe close-up the results of the impact. In fairness, the view from LCROSS as it approached the moon was amazing — even though there was no obvious visual evidence of impact, which early data from the infrared camera on the craft indicates did occur. What happens next is a whole lot of math and science. The LCROSS spacecraft included nine individual science instruments. This suite of instruments consisted of one visible camera, two near-infrared cameras, two mid-infrared cameras, a visible light spectrometer, two near-infrared spectrometers, and a photometer. All nine of those instruments were gathering data simultaneously and streaming that data back to Earth."

Somebody's going to Mars. I hope it's us. It's not just that there's all that stuff to claim ownership of. You see... in orbit around the sun, right by Mars, there's this huge pile of rocks...

It turns out that if you live uphill from some really obnoxious people, you can just roll some big rocks down the hill to make them shut up. In order to make you stop they have to climb up that really steep hill, so it's likely they'll just see reason. Some of those rocks are really big. Killing the dinosaurs ty

The moon has a completely insurmountable 1.2 second ping.Even if a first generation move to the moon, their kids won't put up with a 1.2+ second ping in halo, and will move back to earth when they are 16.So you see, it won't be sustainable.

This site [siemon.com], a cabling vendor, has a nice graph [siemon.com] towards the middle of the page. Reading that graph tells me that the propagation delay of their twisted pair is 470 ns over a 100 m run.

Google calc tells me [google.com] that that works out to 212,765,957 meters per second. Scorching, eh? But compared to lightspeed?

Oh, that's only 71% of the speed of light. OK, so, that's a bit slower. Based on simple RTT and the signal propagation speed difference, your 2.4 sec ping just went up to just over 4 seconds.

Yeah, ok, you were joking. And carbon nanotubule conductors may have a signal propagation speed higher than even virgin-copper oxygen-free 2-gauge Monster(tm) brand network cable. Or not. But even a superconductor, insulated with either vacuum or a dielectric insulator, has a signal propagation speed measured as a fraction of the speed of light. (I've heard.95c cited.)

Your post is very well researched and written but, after reading it a few times just to make sure, i think you were basing those calculations on the idea that we would communicate with the moon using a carbon nanotube/super conductor cable.

I have never heard that suggested before, i mean, we have stories about space elevators on slashdot all the time, but why would you think we would communicate with the moon using a cable?

Its movement relative to the earth would make this pretty much impossible. It also se

No, you got it completely and utterly wrong. The truth is they'll never leave.

On earth, maximal lag can be up to 200 ms just because of great circle distance and light is traveling (correct if I'm wrong) at only 2/3 of speed of light in a fiber optic network. And that's assuming a straight cable.

The moon, however, is way more gamer friendly. It has no atmosphere, and thus no weather, so you can use shar... I mean lasers for communications. Maximal distance ping at the speed of light is just 36.4 ms. Th

Eventually there will be space reality shows, and docking meet ups and game contests between various space stations, such as space boxing, or even undocked who can grow food better, and everyone down on Terra will be watching. A 1.2 second ping will be tolerable for things that really matter.

The moon has a completely insurmountable 1.2 second ping.
Even if a first generation move to the moon, their kids won't put up with a 1.2+ second ping in halo, and will move back to earth when they are 16.
So you see, it won't be sustainable.

Nah, Moon kids set up our own FPS servers. Do you think we want to play with the Earth kids? Those guys crank the in-game gravity way up, about six times the realistic level. I mean, come on!

Yeah, that's exactly what they're saying. They recorded a lot of data, and it was the kind of data they wanted -- just in case you were worried the lack of the predicted totally awesome dust plume meant the whole mission was a failure -- but it's going to take a while to analyze so sorry no conclusions yet.

Personally, I could give a crap about their data analysis and finding water blah blah. To me, the next step is clear: Repeat the mission, but without all that stupid science equipment garbage and inste

Well it's not like the general public actually wants to see the data. They need to keep the public interested so that they can garner funding and you do that by making vague, general statements about "cool" stuff. It saddens me that more people aren't very interested in learning what is actually being done but the rest of us can just wait a few years for the papers to make their wait unto arXiv.

I was on Mauna Kea for the impact. Didn't detect anything visible from the parking lot of the Visitor Station (though I confess I haven't zoomed in on all 2,000+ images and however many video frames I got...) but they had a communications center set up at the mid-level facility, with one of the science PI's for the mission there, and all indications are that the spectroscopic data is really where it's at.

It was strange not seeing any massive impact plume like expected, but seems they got spectroscopic data which is what really matters. You got the sense that all the journos were disappointed there wasn't a big KABOOM with all those questions asked about it in the press conference.

I see this a lot of places "there wasn't a big explosion or anything"...were there even EXPLOSIVES on the impactor? Fuel? I'd guess there wasn't, as any sort of oxydizer probably would run the risk of confusing the data grabbed.

So no, if you slam a chunk of essentially inert metal at a fairly high speed into a pile of gravel, you're not going to get a big Hollywood(tm) explosion.

So no, if you slam a chunk of essentially inert metal at a fairly high speed into a pile of gravel, you're not going to get a big Hollywood(tm) explosion.

A lump of metal going really fast can have more energy than a small explosive. F=MA, remember?

The lack of a dust plume is interesting because it suggests that the craft didn't land in a deep pocket of dust, because dust tends to act like water when you put enough impact force in it, and the moon has no atmosphere to speak of so loosened debris tends to trace a neat parabola as it attempts to escape the moon's gravity well. Likewise, once a particle has been accelerated to escape velocity, it tends to remain

Jim: This just in, we have confirmed reports that the two NASA probes that slammed into the moon earlier today have irrevocably changed the moons trajectory in such a way that it will intersect with Earth's. Scientist's calculated that impact will oc

All nine of those instruments were gathering data simultaneously and streaming that data back to Earth.

Unfortunately, this high volume of data alerted the MPAA/RIAA that copyright theft was in progress, and their lawyers ordered a DMCA take down order to cut off data transmission from the moon. So not all the data was received.

The Moon must appear in court in order for its data service to be restored.

It's unfortunate that NASA hyped this up as much as they did, asking the nation to host "backyard impact parties" and saying you'll see it in your mid sized backyard telescope and whatever.

This may have been a smashing success for the scientists, but each time they play up something that turns out to be a dud in the eyes of Joe Sixpack, they'll lose that much more public support. They're teetering on the brink as it is; people don't understand why they should be funding smashing things into the moon when t

I think they honestly expected a bigger flash. Something that could be seen by a 10" or 12" telescope. Instead, the smallest telescope I heard say "we saw the impact" was MMT, which has a 256" aperature.

While the science geek in me says cool!, the other side says, After 40 years, is this the BEST we can do?

After the Apollo program we pi**ed all the money away on Vietnam, a string of other wars, and "The Great Society" welfare programs. These were all run on the national credit card until the interest on the account is now sucking down more than the income tax provides.

The value was sucked out of the economy and disposed of by government until, despite what advancements WERE made since with what resource

The real reason that there was no plume is that the moon is so frickin' wet with water at the poles the probes each stuck in the mud with a mighty *splat*. We're talking the kind of mud that sucks the boots right off your feet, so muddy they'll have to jack up the cows to milk them.

This is a satellite that reported in a lot of good scientific data, but that still had critical design flaws - it failed after less than a year in orbit, when it was supposed to live on a two-year mission.

"We closely examined Mr Obama's record over the past nine months," said Nobel Prize committee chair Thorbjørn Jagland, "and have established to our satisfaction that he has succeeded in not been George W. Bush in any manner whatsoever. Also, the flying cars, moving sidewalks and robot servants he brought in are pretty cool."

I live in Colorado, and I haven't seen the Moon since they blew it up, and our weather turned cold, snowy, and icy right afterwards. I can't help but think the Moon is gone, so has anyone else seen it lately?